2015 Accomplishments

CORI's 2015 accomplishments include*:

Specialty Courts

CORI secured $700,000 to fund Minnesota's specialty courts, which include drug, DWI, veteran, and mental health courts. These courts are cost-effective and smart on crime, but more importantly, they're the right thing to do. Specialty courts emphasize rehabilitation over retribution in the criminal justice system.

Steve's Law

CORI secured $290,000 to fund the implementation of Steve's Law, which is already saving lives in Minnesota by preventing overdose deaths.

Poison Control Center

CORI secured $1.5 million in funding for Minnesota's Poison Control Center, which provides poison information on medicine to thousands of callers annually while consulting on tens of thousands of exposures.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

CORI secured $500,000 in funding to support initiatives that eliminate alcohol consumption during pregnancy and improve the lives of those living with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders.

Child Protection Oversight

CORI secured $52 million for greater funding in this area in recognition of addiction's impact on child welfare in Minnesota, particularly in light of the ballooning opioid problem in the state.

Integrated Care for High Risk Pregnant Women

CORI secured $271,000 for a program that provides targeted, integrated services for pregnant mothers who are at high risk of poor birth outcomes due to drug use or low birth weight in areas of high need.

Behavioral Health Homes

CORI secured $6.9 million for behavioral health homes. The Chemical and Mental Health Services and Health Care Administrations of the Department of Human Services are working together to design a behavioral health home model which will ensure access to and coordinated delivery of primary care and behavioral health services for adults and children with serious mental illness.

School-Based Diversion for Students with Co-Occurring Disorders

CORI secured $65,000 in funding to implement a decision-making protocol for responding to behavioral incidents involving students. The model is designed to ensure timely referrals to mental health and substance use disorder screening, assessment, and treatment for youth at risk of involvement with the juvenile justice system, provide stronger connections between schools, and support more involvement from families.

Building Community Capacity to Address Adverse Childhood Experiences

CORI secured $796,000 in funding to support programming that targets adverse childhood experiences. The initiative consists of making grants to support an array of mutually reinforcing activities (awareness raising, cross-sector collaboration, capacity building, data analysis and learning) among Children’s Mental Health and Family Services Collaboratives around a common agenda of preventing, reducing and mitigating ACEs. By increasing collaborative leadership, development and community capacity, communities will decrease the incidence of ACEs in children’s lives. The resulting improvements in child resilience will decrease mental, behavioral, and physical disorders.

Opioid Prescribing Improvement and Monitoring Program

CORI secured $33,000 for the program, which works to reduce inappropriate opioid analgesia prescribing by monitoring the prescription of painkillers and developing protocols for their appropriate distribution.

Expanding the Minnesota Restricted Recipient Program (MRRP)

CORI achieved net savings for MRRP, which identifies public recipients who have abused services and manages the cases throughout the restriction period. The MRRP intervenes and works to prevent the abuse of medical services but also ensures that the recipient's medical care is appropriate and coordinated by a primary care clinician.